Big Oil/Lundberg Survey Scare Tactics Against Climate Legislation
by Jan Lundberg
11 July 2009
Lundberg Survey is regularly quoted across the U.S. on gasoline prices and related oil industry developments, even though the firm has dwindled from the 1970s and '80s when called "the Bible of the oil industry." It changed from an independent family business to a 100% tool for Big Oil, decrying "burdensome environmental regulations" while the corporation's head says global warming is "political hot air." So how can Lundberg Survey's new study on climate legislation be accepted as credible?
The Lundberg Letter of July 8, 2009 is titled "Early Estimates, Under a 'Cap and Trade' Law: THE GASOLINE PRICE IMPACT OF CARBON PERMITS" (revised July 9, 2009). The summary on the firm's website and at the bottom of the gratis report says
If the American Clean Energy and Security Act or another "climate bill" becomes law, what would it do to the retail price of gasoline? This report finds that the price impact would be rather modest initially, maybe 30¢ gal. more than without the program. But under such a scheme the U.S. petroleum industry would wither as would the general economy. Barely a decade from now, U.S.-produced gasoline would have less than half the total gasoline pool.
In an editorial, the report tries to give credence to climate-change denial: "the trend is to cooling, not warming." This from the oft quoted source on oil information at CNN, Associated Press, and National Public Radio as well as countless local AP outlets. The report even suggests that if a cooling trend is discovered, "tax subsidies for coal and petroleum based energy would be required so global cooling would be prevented." The author is not aware, apparently, of the massive subsidies in place. To write these rabid sentiments shows that peak oil has not yet been examined objectively by Lundberg Survey.
Since I left the chief executive position of Lundberg Survey in 1986, all its publications and any news have been kept secret from me, understandable when I raised antitrust concerns and launched (along with my mother and brother) a legal effort to return the company to its rightful owner, Mesa Vernell Lundberg, my late mother. So I have had to go by second hand information on the former family business, until now when I have obtained the new report on climate thanks to a web form.
The company always jealously guarded any studies, so maybe the climate changing clients had the policy changed toward free distribution of this new propaganda.
My energy-journalistic interests became focused only on the big picture after I left oil industry service in 1988 and launched Culture Change (formerly Fossil Fuels Policy Action). So tracking the month-to-month changes in gasoline prices, when massive potential change was what I was after, was of hardly any interest to me. I was instead pursuing a national moratorium on new roads and parking lots. Now we see an oil-industry financed attempt for my name -- or the once highly respected firm built by my parents and me -- to be used to fight climate change legislation. Unsurprisingly, given the nature of climate-change denialism and the imperative of oil pushers to boost profits, the new study contains many passages of unfounded, unprofessional nonsense.
The likes of Bjorn Lomborg and the Heritage Foundation are quoted to put fear into tinkering with the status quo of maximizing oil demand. Meanwhile, the specter of "developing nations" not paying for climate protection is trotted out as well. The Lundberg Letter in its heyday never stooped that low, nor would it have used George W. Bush as an authority on climate and economics, as this report does. Indeed, we attacked Reagan's policy of waging covert war on Central America.
Who was this new anti-climate report produced for, other than the oil industry and national business press? Well, news reports say far-right Republicans are targeting House Republicans who voted for the Waxman-Markey bill.
We at Culture Change have serious differences with weak, reformist climate legislation. It flies in the face of scientific findings making it clear that drastic cutbacks in emissions must be adopted now due to projected impacts of global temperature and sea level rise. A few days ago we published an article on ocean acidification, a crisis irrefutably from, largely, fossil fuel burning. Need we add ongoing oil wars and traffic-death on our highways caused by car domination, to call for overall cutbacks in petroleum use?
From the Lundberg Survey report:
GW is a bogeyman. Lore about it has been growing for at least 30 years, and to date no effort to expose it as such has gained enough traction to stop the stampede. The chances are good that one day, “global warming” will be dropped as a destructive fad of fiction, in favor of more practical threats to society. Unfortunately, so much running away from the bogeyman carries, if unintended, consequences to energy costs and supply, and would punish consumers for believing the myth.
At Culture Change we have many problems with that mind set, but also sympathy for anyone being a servant for polluting industries. We hope that more intelligent people can start to see through the "concern" the polluting elites and their henchmen have for the "common people" (consumers). Yes, consumers and more and more of them are critical to the growth scheme of capitalist economics. But to raise fears about disruptive change though a half-way reasonable reallocation of taxation is tantamount to a crime against humanity and all species. The corporate news media spew falsehoods from Trilby Lundberg and do not correct them, even when contacted and offered an alternative. One can ask legitimately if revenue from car advertising and its cousin oil advertising influences the newsroom.
If only "U.S. petroleum industry would wither as would the general economy" were really to happen in a positive way, not just to save the climate. Because food is produced and distributed with dwindling petroleum throughout the modern world, the world's population is at risk from petrocollapse: shortage to cause complete crash and famine. If such a change away from petroleum could really be coming about from the current climate bill, in the delusional, fearful, lying minds defending the status quo, one can only imagine what a truly honest, effective climate bill would do to the hysterical mouthpieces. Since Culture Change does not put much stock into legislation when it is corrupted by compromise and lobbying, we anticipate that fundamental change will come from the people directly. It will likely be that they will be forced by a "global Katrina."
The new climate-bill report from Lundberg Survey does not always read as if it were rigorously produced and edited. In places it seems slapped together as a gift to the corporation's main clients, the major oil companies. The report is still something I would recommend reading, as sections reflect some unusual insights and some valid background. Even though he best analysts at Lundberg Survey were gotten rid of a long time ago, no doubt some of the data bases have continued to be maintained adequately in order for the firm to stay alive. Then again, part of its raison d'etre has been a funding mechanism for the oil industry to make sure the rightful owner of the company, Mesa Lundberg, did not regain control so as to further support the vision of Culture Change as she did.
Study's details
The new Lundberg Survey anti-climate study has for a cover graph a prominent "155.5"-cent per gallon gasoline price increase if a carbon permit is priced at $174 per metric ton, although lower price scenarios are shown too. However, the study admits that "carbon caps... are expected to attack coal use more than any other energy source."
The report goes on to list among its enumerated concerns this one at the top, under "Our reasons:" "Price increases would hurt demand." Later in the report the claim is made that there has been "hobbled domestic capacity expansion." One must realize this study was written for the oil industry -- its total spectrum including OPEC -- in mind.
The claim that "about half [the population] wouldn’t even pay one penny more [for gasoline], to reduce greenhouse gas emissions" is false, according to credible polls. But for this study the source used is, according to Wikipedia, a "self-described conservative think tank."
Another twisted "fact" in the Lundberg Letter, once known for its accuracy and credibility, is that "Refiners are warning that if greenhouse gas emissions are capped and a permit trading system is put into place, domestic capacity and associated jobs would flee overseas." This flies in the face of international programs through treaties that are designed to spread costs for carbon-emission reductions across the world, although the programs are not in place and may not work. Still, fomenting hysteria without careful research seems to be a new hallmark for the Lundberg Letter.
Ever defending gasoline marketers, the study points out with some validity that "Upstream and downstream public relations would be damaged. (Any retail price
hike fans the flames of vigilante blowhards, official and private, accusing
anybody, from the smallest retailer to the biggest oil company, of 'gouging'.)" Whereas the Lundberg Survey of old, back in the Nixon Administration before Trilby Lundberg joined us at the business, helped the IRS roll back gouging -- and proudly.
When Lundberg Letter states "[T]he number of deniers is growing. Cap and Trade pushers are therefore feeling a little more heat to hurry up and establish a new energy regime" we must face the possibility that Lundberg Survey is the most entrenched and respected climate-change denialist organization in U.S. corporate media and perhaps the unwitting public.
"Refiners get 2% of the allowances [carbon permits] but must cover 44% of emissions," complained a National Petrochemical & Refiners Association spokesman interviewed for the Lundberg Survey study. This sounds delightful to Culture Change, since refineries are dispensing the most deadly products apart from greenhouse-gas emissions destorying our climate.
"[B]y 2020, domestically refined gasoline would represent just 49.10% of
total U.S. gasoline supply. More than half of the pool would be handed over to its
two competitors: foreign refiners and ethanol. The implications of this scenario for
U.S. refiners are devastating." What the report forgot is that so much oil for the refineries is imported, therefore such gasoline from that oil is not really domestic! But the real reason there would be devastation for society (and the unmentioned ecosystem) is that there would still be too much gasoline made. In any case, since U.S. crude oil extraction peaked in 1970, more and more imports of oil and gasoline have been inevitable -- but are not guaranteed.
The last section is an "Editorial," as if the preceding portion of the study was not. Phrases such as "control world climate" are used to distort science and well intended, responsible policy. Bowing down to kiss the oil industry's behind, there are warnings shot through this study: e.g., "pressure [to pass a climate bill] (including from offshore) is building ominously."
"[C]ow-released methane is estimated to account for more greenhouse gas emissions than automobiles worldwide." We're sure Lundberg Survey is a pro-vegan company -- Not. "Many leaders of the onslaught on development and consumption of fossil fuels
have also embraced the concept that capitalism, the free market, is an enabler of
this phenomenon that itself must be curbed, or even vanquished, to save the world." What is Trilby Lundberg reading? At any rate, the Lundberg Letter has now become pro-capitalism and pro-free market which the founder, Dan Lundberg, would never allow, given his socialist and humanitarian philosophy.
The editorial distinguishes between "true believers" in "GW" and "hoaxsters" seeking to profit more sinfully than even the "power flaunting by moguls and tycoons of
simple capitalism". Here is the conclusion of the editorial -- obviously paid for by oil industry funds that are subsidized by everyone else:
GW is a bogeyman. Lore about it has been growing for at least 30 years, and to date
no effort to expose it as such has gained enough traction to stop the stampede. The
chances are good that one day, “global warming” will be dropped as a destructive fad
of fiction, in favor of more practical threats to society. Unfortunately, so much
running away from the bogeyman carries, if unintended, consequences to energy costs
and supply, and would punish consumers for believing the myth.
If Lundberg Survey really cared about the oil industry and the petroleum infrastructure, it would not advocate more and more consumption of gasoline. At over 130 billion gallons a year in the U.S., such unsustainable burning and spilling of this violent poison means the Earth is being drained of oil far too rapidly for any orderly scaled-down post-peak future for industrialism as we know it.
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Further reading:
"Questions for the Gasoline Guru-ess, Trilby Lundberg" Culture Change
Climate and energy news from the Global Warming Crisis Council listserve:
Send a blank email to gwcc-subscribe "at" lists.riseup "dot" net
Disillusioned Environmentalists Turn on Obama as Compromiser
By Leslie Kaufman, New York Times:
Compromises made to win passage of a climate-change bill
have infuriated and disappointed environmental activists.
New York Times
Convenience Store / Petroleum Daily News, July 10, 2009, "The Real Cost of Cap & Trade:
Lundberg Survey examines affect of climate legislation on retail gas prices" CSP
Culture Change mailing address: P.O. Box 3387, Santa Cruz, California, 95063, USA, Telephone 1-215-243-3144 (and fax). Culture Change was founded by Sustainable Energy Institute (formerly Fossil Fuels Policy Action), a nonprofit organization.
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